During an official visit to Shechem, the Jordanian prime minister, Abdel Salam Majali, told leaders of the local clans that he felt a confederation between Jordan and a Palestinian state would be the best option for the inhabitants of both. His statement, writes Khaled Abu Toameh, is a sign of an old idea regaining currency but still unlikely to become a reality:

In a rare moment of truthfulness, Majali admitted that the Palestinians were not “fully qualified to assume their responsibilities, especially in the financial field, in wake of the failure of the Arab countries to support them.” So Majali is basically telling the Palestinians: “You can’t rely on your Arab brothers to help you build a state. Jordan is the only Arab country that cares about you.” . . .

A study published in 2014 shows that the Jordanian public was against the idea. . . . There are, however, signs that a growing number of Palestinians are beginning to entertain the idea of being part of Jordan. . . .

The renewed talk about a confederation between the Palestinians and Jordan underscores the Palestinian leadership’s failure to convince many Palestinians of its ability to lead them toward statehood. It is also a sign of the revival of the role of Palestinian clans in the Palestinian political arena. For the past two decades, the power of the clans has been undermined, due to the presence of central governments—the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the weakness of these two governments has prompted clan leaders to take matters into their hands and renew talk about a confederation with Jordan. . . .

For now, it is hard to see how a Jordanian leader would agree to turn millions of Palestinians into citizens of the kingdom. . . . Still, the talk about a confederation between the Palestinians and Jordan shows that under the current circumstances, the two-state solution (a Palestinian state alongside Israel) is no longer being viewed by Palestinians as a realistic proposal that will bring their people a better life.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.